


Two Tears in a Bucket

by dunked_delirious



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, First Meetings, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of resets, Mentions of sex work, Papyrus (Underswap) Needs A Hug, Pre-Relationship, Rus has a whole flock of birds to flip, Spicyhoney - Freeform, Suicide Attempt, Undertale Monsters on the Surface, garbage puns and gallows humor, implied trauma, mature language, mention of pigeons, or a hopeful one at least, vague allusions to what might be past assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:13:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27924328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dunked_delirious/pseuds/dunked_delirious
Summary: It wouldn't kill Rus to be nicer to the guy trying to talk him off a bridge.But then, he's still around, so it can't be all that bad, right?
Relationships: Papyrus/Papyrus
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27





	Two Tears in a Bucket

**Author's Note:**

> one of my brain cells told the other, "bro, what's the worst possible first meeting for two lovers you can think of?", and apparently the answer was whatever the everloving fuck this is. Nevermind that angst and spicyhoney are very much in my discomfort zone when writing; this fucking thing just wouldn't. Let me. Be. Now that I've excised it, maybe I'll finally get some fucking peace and quiet. 
> 
> the tags ought to speak for themselves, but _please_ bear in mind that this is written from **the PoV of someone who's actively suicidal.** His head isn't a great place to be and since we're dealing with a Sans-type, the self-deprecation comes in the shape of tone-deaf jokes and gallows humor. To those who have been in a bad way themselves, things might hit close to home, so I urge you to **please** put your own safety first when deciding whether to read this.

Ebbott fucking Bridge stood out like a sore and grossly dislocated thumb in a landscape already marred by the vagaries of sudden changes. Long, sprawling beams of stainless steel that lined a span of near two thousand feet, painted over with garish shades of red that didn’t quite match up at the seams, almost like the poor sods tasked with the paint job had to meet halfway only to realize they’d nabbed their cans from different suppliers.  
  
Then again, wasn’t much contention to be had that the damn thing hadn’t been built for beauty, only bland utility, and hailing from a world where bridges had been known to fall collateral to the wrath of zealous lizard monsters, Rus didn’t have much to put against it. Beauty was in rare supply in Rus’s Underground, rarer still in the ones he knew were even darker, and the sting of abject guilt he felt for his failure to be grateful was another nail to join the ones already lined up for his coffin.  
  
Anyway.  
  
Bridge might be an eyesore, but the sights to be seen from it were surely something else. Beyond the industrial ground zero lay broad swaths of unscathed nature, left in homage to the path that could still be seen from way above where it wound its way around the hills and to the shadow of Mount Ebbott. The only signs of sentient presence were the occasional wooden pier and a scattering of cabins by the shores, and not all of them were raised by humans. Judicial circlejerks aside, the surrounding portion of the lake was uniformly recognized as monster territory, and at this time of the year, it was layered with a sheet of ice as far as the eye could see. In daylight, some hotheads liked to imagine themselves chill enough to go ice skating, and strewn across the ice were the cheery bulbs of winter buoys, complete with words of wisdom urging those within their reading range to kindly fuck the hell right off the brittle ice.  
  
None of it was visible in the dead of night and that was just as fucking well. Rus hadn’t come here to admire the view, didn’t need the warmth of the setting sun giving him cold feet. He’d spent enough time dilly-dallying as it was; all that hard-boiled anguish made poorly for a filling final meal.  
  
But neither the sparsity of sights nor the swell of nicotine from Rus’s seventh ciggie had a bearing on the whims of his mind’s eye as it wandered, picking tiredly at the loose threads in his memory as if searching for a buoy of its own. The Fume Hood Fiasco back at Ebbott State may have brought his prospects as a chemist to a swift, decisive end, but one thing that had clung to his colander of a skull like overcooked spaghetti was the objective weirdness of water. Just the ~~anomaly~~ aberration that was its solid density had caught his fancy from the get-go, and they all owed it big time, Rus and every other asshole that’d been on literal thin ice, be it to skate or simply read the signs. Its heat capacity was a wonderful thing, always quick to the rescue of his ass and copious furniture in the past whenever things combusted with the apparent catalyst that was his presence.  
  
Surface tension, now that was its whole own branch of chemi-magic, and as a child he’d sat for hours on the banks in Waterfall, watching the water skeeters do their jesus-dance across the sparkling depths. No such spectacles up here: about all Rus could see from his vantage point was muted, slate-grey darkness. If he got lucky and broke the fall with his skull, he wouldn’t have time for regret while he was drowning.  
  
Perched on the ledge with his legs dangling off the pier cap, Rus muttered a curse as he shivered, clenching his teeth around the stub of his cigarette in a desperate bid to keep warm. Even with a lifetime in Snowdin behind him, the winters of Ebbott seemed to pack an inferiority complex of their own, driving them to consistently conquer new and dizzying levels of damp and shitty. The temperatures plummeted during the nights, and the concrete slab currently boring a bruise into Rus’s tailbone made poorly for a sitting surface, even more without the scarf and mittens Blue had bullied upon him in their very first month on the surface.  
  
Rus crushed out his cigarette before tossing it into the pile of its burnt-out brethren and lit another, mouth curling sourly as he breathed out a cloud of bitter smoke. Just like him to get literal cold feet, why stop at the figurative, that’d never been his style. Practical jokes were more his speed, which made the fact that he had nothing at all for this near doubly poignant. Probably was for the better, anyway; wasn’t like he was planning on sticking around for the punch line.  
  
 _ ~~and Blue would be expecting one in the upcoming days, holding out desperately, clinging to hope, he hated japes, and the one time he would be praying for one Rus wouldn’t be there to see the hope drain from his eyelights~~  
_  
“Are you all right?”  
  
The voice came from behind Rus, softly, slowing down the scattered welter of his thoughts. Hoarse and crisply quiet, barely audible over the roar of passing cars, and Rus kept his back turned against his better judgment, clinging to the futile hope that ignoring it would make it go away.  
  
“I’m going to have to take that for a negative.”  
  
Welp, so much for that. Rus closed his sockets and took a deep drag of his cigarette, forced his breaths to even while he pled whichever deities he hadn’t yet enraged to grant him half a scrap of wit to deal with this.  
  
“oh yeah, everything is hunky-dory,” he called over his shoulder, not bothering to turn around. “living my best life on the edge, taking in the sights. happiness r us, now scram.”  
  
There was a muted shuffle of shoes in the snow, boots or maybe sneakers, and Rus had to force himself to stillness against the prickles crawling down his spine, his body’s jaded warning about _someone_ getting closer. Big shocker, that; his scathing little spiel probably waved more red flags than a parade in Soviet Russia.  
  
In his mind, whatever scraps of common courtesy he’d kept around were waving a cheery banner of their own in a valiant stand against the vitriol that welled up readily in the back of Rus’s throat. Wasn’t any real reason to be a fuming dick to what’s-their-face, hell, their night just got one hell of a wrench in its works. But hey, maybe if he pissed them off enough, they’d punt him off the ledge themselves.  
  
The thought was so brutally unfunny that Rus had to stifle a giggle, the end of his cigarette flickering dimly in the night. He wasn’t so sure his unwanted companion would share the sentiment; if anything, their words made a case for the contrary as they asked very reasonably, “Your definition of best life entails smoking alone on the wrong side of a bridge at half past four in the morning.”  
  
Rus scowled as he crushed out his smoked-up butt with more force than strictly necessary, any amusement he might have garnered giving way beneath a fresh swell of irritation. Some part of him was a stickler for the benefit of the doubt, and sure, he could catch a glimpse of the good intentions behind this particular slice of hell, but for flying fuck’s sake, now he had the burden of someone else’s ruined night around his neck and shit like this was half the reason he wound up here to begin with. He’d never been much of a team player, liked his misery to be a solo act, and rocked his feel-like-shit shtick just fine without this brandied cherry on top.  
  
“listen, if you’re looking to play hero, the thrift store down at central's been swamped with capes since halloween. ebbott general is down the street from there, so fetch your batmobile and save your dark-knighting for the hospice, yeah?”  
  
See, Rus was certain he had plenty more to say. That was the case more often than not: hell, most monsters he knew were of a mind they’d all be better off if his mouth had come with brakes. Words, wanted or more usually not, were his forte, kindling readily at the forefront of his thoughts—and every last one left him in a lurch when he spun around to actually look at his self-appointed savior.  
  
Ebbott had no shortage of monsters, housing near three hundred from Rus’s underground and three more worlds besides. His surprise came not from seeing that this was one, not even from the faintly-fiendish simmer of eyes that glowed the telltale red of the Fellverses. What truly threw him was laying eyes upon a face so similar to his own, all pale bone and hard angles, pitted with scars and jagged teeth that would’ve been a hit with Rus’s teenage self.  
  
Another skeleton monster, huh. Some odds they were; hell, he picked the wrong night to do this, should’ve hit up the sweepstakes instead.  
  
His pseudo-savior must really have been gunning for Bruce Wayne, because whatever iron was upholding that expression didn’t budge. If there was surprise to rival Rus’s, he didn’t let it show. Those burning eyelights remained level, scathingly impassive as they watched Rus try and fail to light another cigarette with trembling fingers. “I’m well aware of the route to the hospital. Much like I am of the fact that anyone there has qualified caregivers tending to their needs, while you are here alone.”  
  
Uh-uh, clearly not as alone as he’d hoped for. Rus gave up on the lighter and stuck the unlit ciggie between his teeth, hoping it’d in some way keep him from gnashing himself into a dental emergency. “i was, until you came along and crashed my pity party. speaking of which, if you’re looking for a sign you weren’t welcome, this is it.”  
  
“And if I were looking for a way to have you step back from that ledge?”  
  
That gave Rus pause, not so much from the tragically unsmooth segue, but because it somehow still succeeded in making his mind scramble for an answer.  
  
His one-shouldered shrug came off more like a quiver. “dunno. something like ‘there’s an eighteen-wheeler truck headed this way at two hundred miles per minute’ might do the trick.”   
  
His Batman didn’t smile. Rus didn’t expect him to. Neither did he expect him to take a tentative step sideways, nodding towards the empty spot on the pier cap next to him and ask, “Would you mind if I joined you?”  
  
Rus blinked, briefly stupefied. The simmering irritation that’d been sitting firmly lodged in his throat was falling to the wayside, temporarily appeased, and instead Rus felt like he was getting whiplash from all the non-sequiturs, fucking hell, was this how other people felt whenever he opened his cocktrap?  
  
Didn’t get to nurse that thought for long before the meaning of the words sank in, and all his anger came rearing back, reignited. His head felt heavy with the sudden freight of livid rage, and even as he glared, Rus hoped in some resentful, bitter recess of his soul that this other guy could _feel_ it. Not because the thought of someone sitting at his side was not appealing, but because it _was_.  
  
“keep on your side of the rail,” he ground out at last, pulling his knees up so his legs no longer dangled off the bridge.  
  
Seemed like a future reason for regret, but that’d have to come later. For now, his intruder seemed willing to play ball. His footsteps were soft as he approached the rail with near-ingratiating slowness, heeding Rus’s warning and crouching down to sit cross-legged next to the nearby beam, tipping his head back to rest against the railing. Hardly looked like the step-up to a heroic lurch, and yet Rus tracked each move with wary sockets, watching for any telltale twitches or the beginnings of a lunge, his magic reared and ready to drag him through a shortcut should his skullduggery Samaritan try for a cheap shot. Of course, there was the off-chance his white knight had poured a lifetime’s worth of training into concealing that sorta tells but eh, wasn’t much to do about it, was there, so Rus would take his chances. If his fears were founded, Rus had to grudgingly admit, Skeletor’s stunt double had one hell of a full-body poker face going. His posture remained perfectly relaxed, even as his eyelights wandered back to Rus, arms amiably crossed atop his knees as he said, softly, “My name is Edge.”  
  
The hysterical giggle that burst from Rus’s chest wasn’t one he remembered authorizing. Egregiously rude, and probably the height of ill-advised, for life expectancy and for his rapport with this monster, to make light of a name that was either chosen or earned—both concepts of considerable clout, he knew, for those that hailed from Fellverse murderworlds.  
  
It was an unforeseen relief that Edge, and fuck if that name didn’t draw attention to the steep lines of his cheekbones, seemed unfazed by Rus’s lapse of courtesy.  
  
“edge, huh?” Rus cast an appraising look his way, scarred skull to snowy sneakers, and noted for the first time that he was decked out in wintry runner’s garb, for all in the world like he’d been out on a midnight jog, as one did in the midst of fucking February. “it’s like you were destined to pluck suckers off bridges.”  
  
Edge’s expression fell so fast it probably left an ice hole way below them and Rus wondered, not for the first time, if it had been kinder to everyone involved if he’d skipped the bridge and tied his dogdamned tongue into a noose. That hurt cleared away before he could come to a conclusion, and Rus resorted to try again, his breaths clouding in the streetlit darkness. “i’m rus.”  
  
“Rus,” Edge echoed, and Rus didn’t know what it was about the way he said it, but there was _something_ alright, the single syllable of his own chosen name softened by an intangible accent that he couldn’t place.  
  
He didn’t much feel like trying, thought he’d settle for a do-over instead, nodding pointedly at Edge’s getup. “make a habit of getting your laps in before the asscrack of dawn?”  
  
The line of Edge’s mouth was hard, living up to his namesake, but it softened ever-so-slightly as he said, “As a matter of fact, I do. Fewer people are out and about at this hour, as you can imagine.” _‘And fewer humans’_ remained unsaid, shared unanimously between them all the same.  
  
Rus forced a mirthless chuckle. “guess neither of us got our wish for privacy.”  
  
Edge said nothing, and Rus didn’t press. Aimlessly, he toed at the heap of burned-out ciggies at his feet, chewing on the one still in his mouth as he idly wondered if another go at lighting it was worth pulling his hands from the lukewarm confines of his hoodie pocket. The time-worn metal of his lighter felt way too cold against his fingers, and Rus wrapped a hand around it anyway, his fingertips scuffing metal in a rhythmic tap-a-tap that was barely heard over the murmur of the highway.  
  
Edge spoke first, his voice carrying lightly through the clamor, “Does anyone know that you’re here, Rus?”  
  
“no.” The thought alone grazed his soul like a frisson, a chill that had nothing to do with the temperatures around them. Rus was no con man by trade, but also no stranger to subterfuge, and shortcuts did a lot of heavy lifting when it came to covering tracks.  
  
Edge nodded and his sockets were shut, sparing Rus the pressure of eye contact, and Rus wondered if Edge even knew the favor he was doing him by not looking as he asked, again, “Is there anyone who would want to?”  
  
Blech, probably more people than Rus cared to list off at the moment. As for who _should_ , Rus only had one monster on his mind, except there wasn’t a worse thought in Rus’s ever-growing arsenal than Blue having to see him like this. Not that he would even know where to go looking; Rus had pulled the equivalent of a sanitation job in covering his tracks, complete with an alphabet’s worth of contingency plans if he were to be caught sneaking out at midnight like a mutinous teen. Nothing was left behind that ran even an infinitesimal risk of leading Blue to him. Not even a note, not that it was for a lack of trying. His perimortem word search came up dry, as he knew it would, he’d never been good with words and his bro deserved better. He’d be shattered as it was and didn’t need a token paper scrap of Rus’s chicken scratch to haunt him.  
  
Then there were the others, a motley crew of people he knew only from the flitter of tags on his news feed, and if any of them woke up with their inner void unfilled by the daily scroll-stream of his bullshit, they wouldn’t be too surprised once his obit hit the bummer beat. Rus was a basket case and that was a fact, didn’t take a deep dredging of his archives to piece that little shit mosaic together. Hell, the entirety of today alone was one big, fat Q.E.D. on that. Didn’t even need a friendly nudge to drag him under; he’d been well underway with tapping out another vent post when he was blindsided by the overwhelming urge to die.  
  
Edge must have taken his silence for an answer, or maybe it was more of what was showing on his face. The fleeting softness in his eyes was barely there; Rus only caught it because he was so used to _seeing_ , and somehow he still felt it like a slap. He didn’t think Edge could hear his breathing hitch, _hoped_ he couldn’t, but when Edge changed the topic, relief let him breathe again, welling over his soul in a warming rush. “What do you do for a living, Rus?”  
  
“i’m a cam whore.” Rus didn’t have the spoons to sugarcoat it, or to lie to himself and deny his petty whim of rattling Edge’s calm. Rus had no clue about the world Edge came from, but up here, him whacking it for pay was old news; a stubborn holdover from the Underground, he supposed, where he’d long since lost the draw of being a novelty. It fed into his hemorrhaging thirst for faux affection and curbed some of the guilt he felt over Blue being the sole breadwinner, too sickeningly close to how it had been below ground. If Edge had felt the need to ask the question, odds were he didn’t make a sport of tuning in to Rus’s Sunday streams, more’s the fucking pity.  
  
But all Edge did was nod, and Rus’s shameful disappointment came laced with a side serving of relief. “What do you like to do when you’re not working?”  
  
Such an innocuous question, so surely coming from the right place, and fuck if Rus could explain why it sliced across his soul the way it did, ripping through the curdled crust of artificial calm to where everything just _ached_ ; thoughts tangled up so tight in feelings that all Rus found when he reached out was a bloated, necrotizing mess. What _had_ he been doing since they’d come to the surface? How long had it been since his days were something else than an amalgam of depression naps and smoke-signaling his way through crippling panic?  
  
 _ ~~and oh, he hadn’t missed Blue’s unsubtle attempts to make him backtrack, but he just fucking~~_ ~~couldn’t _; hadn’t even touched math again past learning his best angles, and the only astronomy he did these days was to quantify the magnitude of his failures_~~  
  
Rus felt the lighter rattle against his trembling fingers, couldn’t fathom how he managed to push past the teary tailback in his throat to croak out, “i make these shitty pigeon sweaters.”  
  
“Pigeon sweaters.” It wasn’t a question so much as an unsubtle incentive to continue. The almost-solemn seriousness on Edge’s face was fucking comedy gold, but Rus had never in his life felt less like laughing.  
  
The measly warmth of his pocket was reaching thermal equilibrium and Rus shifted to hug his knees instead, absently scratching his wrists through the fabric. “it’s a long story.”  
  
“So tell me.”  
  
If it was the tone or the look Edge gave him, Rus didn’t know. Jaded and cold as he was, his daily allotment of fucks long boring a hole at the bottom of the meter, those three words were somehow enough to send him for a tailspin. He didn’t know how Edge was doing this or why, had no explanation for the way that raspy voice straddled the precarious line between indifferent and overbearing without so much as a wobble on the step-up. Clear of aggravation in a way no one’s had ever been. Not even Blue’s.  
  
Eyelights, those always revealed more than their owners cared to share, and Rus thought he’d play the odds with what his own might show as he frantically scanned Edge’s face for any tells, looked as deep as he could without really _looking_ —for resentment or mockery or worse, the faintest shred of blithering pity. There was none; only the steepest curveball awaited him in that crimson gaze, a void of judgment couched in unexpected warmth.  
  
Finding his voice was like learning to ride a bike: the first, painful word jarred loose to spill the rest in a flood of anguish.  
  
“we rescued a pigeon a while back, you know?” He trailed off, catching himself a second too late on the ‘we’ but fuck it, this wasn’t Assholes Anonymous. “my bro and i, we have a flat a coupla blocks off fringe. you know, where shit’s been under renovation ever since we came up top?” Edge said nothing, only gave an acknowledging hum and Rus was careful not to let his eyelights wander, kept them stubbornly trained on his sneakers as he carried on, “they were patching all the gutters up for winter, ‘cause apparently having people getting shish-kebab’d on icicles in winter is sorta bad for business, and they found this pigeon nest in a crack with a tiny baby squeaker. installation guys were pretty stumped, sorta wish i’d been around to see the look on their faces.” Rus swallowed, a familiar, dreaded thickness rising in his throat. “overheard ‘em talking over what to do with it. managed to haggle it off of them before they called in pest control. they’re seen as rats with wings all over, yeah? they’d just put it down and i— i couldn’t let them. it’d barely started living, you know?”  
  
Oh, how he hated the stupid tremble in his voice. Wasn’t doing so hot in building his case for emotional stability, and he could damn well picture the look on Edge’s face as he listened to his raving blather. It was an image Rus could do without confirming and he did, kept his eyes on his slush-damp sneakers as he went ruefully on, “nearly died anyway. city pigeons are sick from the moment they are born. fought off trich and pmv in the first month we kept her, but her head still spins sometimes so i can’t damn well kick her out to the resident cats on a platter.”  
  
Edge only sat with him and still said nothing, kept his quiet save for the occasional hum to assure him he was listening. More courtesy than Rus was used to, damn well more than he deserved, and there’d be self-hate galore to unpack later, but in the here and now, Rus couldn’t help but take advantage of that kindness.  
  
“anyway, figured that if she’s with us to stay, she might as well be let in on the gyftmas sweaters. when everybody’s ugly, no one is, yeah?” It was one of his fonder surface memories. Even now, the mere mention brought on a brittle smile, thin as one-ply toilet paper. “they’re more like pants, anyway. i can’t crochet for shit, but she doesn’t know a good knot from the bad, you know? so i make her little sweaters. surprised she doesn’t preen them off. used to tuck her in with my failed attempts at placemats to keep her warm as a baby, so maybe she remembers.”  
  
“Does she have a name?”  
  
The sound of Edge’s voice pulled Rus from the bittersweet whirl of nearly year-old memories. He chanced a wary side-eye Edge’s way, met with the same bland calm Rus never would have thought he'd find so soothing.  
  
“coulomb.” Rus grimaced, raising a placating hand, “don’t ask. it felt hilarious at the time.”  
  
But Edge’s resting bitch face remained tactfully neutral, and so was his tone as he stated, matter-of-factly, “You named your pigeon after a pun.”  
  
That brought on an involuntary grin. “actually, he’s better known for his electric mumbo-jumbo, but you’ve got the gist.” Rus trailed off, glancing back across the ice-covered plains of the lake and the bright scatter of city lights on the horizon. “didn’t even want to name her at first, thought she was a goner. those first few nights…” Rus shook his head, forced his voice out past the tears that prickled threateningly at his sockets. “thought i’d lost her twice, but she just kept on breathing.”  
  
His voice gave out at last, the too-familiar pressure seized around his throat like a vice, but Edge didn’t push him to speak. Turned out there was one more kindness left for him in the world: grappling with his inner crybaby seemed to kick his furnace into gear. Rus was beginning to feel his fingers again, and that seemed as close to a go-ahead from the universe as it’d get. Grudgingly, he pulled a hand from his pocket, grimacing at the renewed rush of winter air on his phalanges as he tried the lighter again, lighting up the ol’ coffin nail still in his mouth on his third try. The sweet surge of nicotine was soothing, rolling down his frazzled nerves like sweet honey dew. Rus took another drag and held, exhaling with a gratified sigh, then reached back into his pocket for the pack and held it out to Edge. Edge took one, holding it daintily between thumb and forefinger as Rus lit it for him. He could just about see the burning question hovering on the tip of Edge’s tongue, and eh, better that he be the one to pop the blister. “i wasn’t going to abandon her, if you were wondering. she’s back home with my bro, he’ll look after her, whether she likes it or not. he’s got a soft spot for the underdogs, only reason he’s put up with me for so long.”  
  
A frown fell over Edge’s face in a beat, the real thing to the shadow from before. “Did he tell you that?”  
  
“what— no!” Rus coughed on smoke, nearly fumbling his lighter as he lurched up to stare wildly at the storm cloud of Edge’s expression. “he’s never— he wouldn’t! it’s just— who he is, you know? he’s got this bug up his ass about taking care of things. of people. fuck, he’s pack-bonded to a chipped coaster he brought back from work!” He didn’t think he imagined the relief that seeped slowly into Edge’s features, all that tension dissolving like cornflakes in hot milk. He’d explained himself, he didn’t have to say any more, and yet Rus added, very softly, “it’s kind of why i don’t want him to know i’m here.”  
  
There, he’d breached the topic, let the cat out of the bag for Edge to bounce back at him. He’d been silent for so long Rus dimly wondered if he’d gone and shat himself a brand new problem, when that cool voice spoke up again, hoarse and nearly too soft to be audible. “You’re worried about him. What it’d do to him to learn that you were gone.”  
  
“he’ll get over it.” That’s what he’d been telling himself every night, day after day until it was the only truth he knew. Hearing it out loud felt different somehow, heavier, and some part of Rus recoiled at how easily the words had fallen.  
  
“You don’t know that.” The cutting-glass sharpness of Edge’s voice caught Rus off-guard, the night’s first trace of temper. It raked painfully against Rus’s own, the anger he’d bought time for with the cigarettes kindling in kind.  
  
“and you do?” He was fully aware of sounding like a petulant child, part of him cringing away even as he whipped around to scowl at Edge.  
  
He was not prepared for Edge to do the same, meeting his glare, and his own held a core of tempered iron. “Yes. I do.”  
  
Rus swallowed around the stump of his cigarette, looking away. The gnawing guilt he’d successfully tamped down with every distant thought about his brother stirred back to life with those three words, squeezed around his soul like razor wire. Who would’ve guessed the folks with foot-in-mouth disease were the lucky ones all along; what Rus had was more a case study in someone deepthroating their whole leg.  
  
“People don’t end up where you are by choice,” Edge continued, and Rus hated to admit how much of a relief it was to hear his voice hadn’t retained that hardness. “It takes inordinate amounts of pain to bring a person to the point where dying feels like a favor to their loved ones. And you’re right, I haven’t lived that agony myself.” Edge reached over to drop his burnt-out butt into the pile at Rus’s feet. “But I was very close with someone who did, and it feels safe to say that past a certain point, no imagined grief stacks up to what you’re feeling in the moment.”  
  
Rus swallowed around his own stump, trying vainly to loosen the damned constrictor knot lodged in his throat. “how selfish of me, right?”  
  
Very slowly, Edge shifted his weight until he was sitting sideways to the railing. The dim glow of his eyelights was mellowed by the darkness, a softer red than the bulbs of the transmission towers in the distance.  
  
“I don’t think selfish is the right word for it. Nor that people like you deserve to be shamed and blamed for that line of reasoning,” he added softly. “What I do believe is none of us are shrewd enough to accurately gauge the pain of others, especially when it comes down to losing those we love.”  
  
“especially when our brainpan’s ten bolts short of OSHA guidelines,” Rus muttered under his breath. His cigarette had long since burned down to the filter, but he kept chewing on it anyway, the bitterness a welcome thing for once. Helped take the edge off the gaze he could feel on him even as he failed to monster up and meet it, off eyelights that felt like they were boring straight into his soul and somehow still not hating what they saw.  
  
Eyelights that held sympathy, not pity, and Rus could binge a dictionary and still be pressed for words to express how much the difference meant to him as he watched Edge settle back against the rail, never once breaking the gaze that was so clear and yet so startlingly gentle as he asked, quietly enough that Rus read the words off his mouth more than he heard them spoken, “You’ve been hurting for a long time, haven’t you?”  
  
And Rus couldn’t even answer that, _wouldn’t_ , wasn’t about to start counting years now with one surface year and dog-only-knew how many resets behind them. Couldn’t think about the last date he remembered seeing in the tattered journals before Blue carted them off to storage with the rest of their weatherworn junk from Underground. Knew that he could remember, if he wanted: could remember it all if he really, really tried, but he wasn’t gonna. He’d lived with the urges for so long, found other ways to ease that itch until it turned into something like those books: out of sight, always within reach, and he couldn’t go opening that pandora’s box now, couldn’t coax those memories back into the light of streetlit night.  
  
“You’re shaking.”  
  
He was, Rus realized with a start. The faint rattle he’d readily ascribed to the din of the road was coming from him, his breaths shuddered out in a staccato, fingerbones clattering against each other and whatever other junk he kept in his pockets. He hadn’t noticed when the snow had picked back up, fat flakes drifting down to melt against his cheeks in cold, wet puddles.  
  
Quite fitting, he supposed, but all Rus felt right then was chilled and miserable.  
  
“hey, could you—” His voice broke halfway; even with the cold slush seeping fast through his thin pants, his throat somehow still managed to be dry. Rus coughed to clear it before he tried again, “lend me a hand so i don’t shiver my way right off the pier?”  
  
Edge said nothing; merely pulled himself to his feet and held out one gloved hand for Rus to take. Rus gripped it gingerly, firmer when his fingers refused to latch on at first, finding other handholds on the frozen railing as he maneuvered himself upright and clambered over the rail with all the grace and gaiety of a sack of manure. Edge’s grip didn’t budge until he was back to his feet on the other side. His fingers felt warm even through the barrier of his thermal gloves, and he didn’t pull away, leaving it to Rus to realize with a mortifying jolt that he was still holding on and drop his hand like it was his hottest mixtape. “sorry—”  
  
“Here.”  
  
Edge’s voice put a swift end to his dashing thoughts. Rus jerked his head up, only to stare in dumbfounded silence at the windcheater jacket being held out to him. The hems were lined with safety reflectors, he saw now, flaring starkly in the light of passing cars.  
  
“Take it,” Edge insisted. “It is light, but better than nothing.”  
  
“then you’ll get cold instead,” Rus protested, but he did have a way with reading looks, and the one on Edge’s face brooked no compromise. Meekly, he did as he was told, hogging the jacket and draping it over his shoulders like an off-the-cuff blanket.  
  
Edge’s eyelights held a sparkle of amusement, soured though it was by the grim tinge to the smile that curled his mouth. “I assure you that I won’t. I’ve been told I’m rather warm-blooded for someone lacking any cardiovascular system to speak of.” Was that humor he was hearing? Yeah, Rus could work with that.  
  
Rus put on the brightest smile he had in stock, and if it didn’t quite match the lumen on the package, it wasn’t like Edge had known him long enough to know the difference. “why don’t i find that _heart_ to believe.”  
  
The brief trace of long-suffering acceptance that flitted across Edge’s expression wasn’t wholly unexpected, and still warmed Rus better than the jacket. Which was, all things considered, a contender worth its mettle: Rus’s face was still freezing, but the remainder of his upper half felt warm, shielded from the biting wind and sleeting snow. Beneath the thermal layer, the inside of the thing was generously lined with fleece, and Rus wriggled his arms into the sleeves, cozying up contentedly in the decadent warmth.  
  
And Edge just stood there, watching, and let him. Without his jacket, his only shield from weather-wrath was a long-sleeved, high-neck top—one that clung so tightly to the shapely outline of the broad ribcage beneath it could hardly be anything but spandex. Rus tore his eyes away before he was caught staring, faint heat welling to his cheekbones that hadn’t a jot to do with the jacket. Jawbreaker of an eyecandy as he was, Edge still hadn’t breached the pressing issue that desperately needed addressing, and neither had Rus. It didn’t mean it wasn’t there, hanging in the air between them like a sordid cloud, thicker than the stink from the sludge trucks back at Fringe.  
  
Might as well start pumping up the sewage.  
  
Rus drew a deep breath, rocking lightly on his heels as he let the words out with a resigned sigh. “so, i guess this is the part where you drag me to the ER.”  
  
Edge blinked, confounded, and the split-moment of affront in his eyelights before that bland calm slotted back in place would prolly have been funny on a different day. Rus was kind of a tough crowd to himself these days.  
  
“I’m not going to drag you anywhere,” he said gravely. Then he surprised Rus by stepping closer, reaching out with one hand as if to gently tap his shoulder and then thinking better of it, letting it drop back by his side. “But I do want you to speak with someone. To your brother, or to someone at the hospital.”  
  
“no hospital,” Rus snapped immediately. Fuck, just the thought of being in public surrounded by whitecoats with clipboards brought the hankering for the pier back with a vengeance.  
  
He fully expected Edge to get cross with him, but he only nodded. “Understood. How about your brother?”  
  
Just the mention of Blue pinwheeled him back into the trite imaginations of his grief, the same as before—only now, it felt like a hard punch in the plexus, stealing Rus’s breath along with his denial. Nausea rose up in his nonexistent throat, thick and terrible; Edge really wasn’t going to force him, Rus realized with a twinge of unprecedented horror, wasn’t going to haul him off to the loony bin, or drag him home to dump him on his brother’s doorstep like a delinquent youth that he’d caught out past curfew. He could lie to Edge right now and Edge would be none the wiser; wouldn’t be his first time spinning a tall tale to get well-meaning do-goods out of his grill. He could up and walk away right now and Edge wouldn’t lift a finger, maybe only to pat himself on the shoulder for a job well done, while Rus headed back home and… did what, really? Pretended that tonight had never happened, stowed this memory away the same way he’d entombed a thousand others? Swept all this under the rug, spun his bro another bedtime story to keep his peace at night? Went back to life the way they knew it, leaving all this another sin to saunter its merry way up his spine at night, all so that he could look into Blue’s eyelights every morning and pretend he hadn’t been one well-meaning Fell away from ripping a Rus-shaped hole through Blue’s entire future?  
  
“please, don’t make me do this,” Rus whispered, words falling paper-thin and thready into the blustering wind. The snowfall was picking up; his fingers were freezing, and Rus crossed his arms over his chest, tucking in his hands in an attempt at staving off the chill. His throat felt overstrained and aching, tears tied with nausea over the chance to choke him up. So far in, the tears were winning: Rus could feel them streaming down his cheekbones in traitorous rills, freezing against bone to leave behind another icy ache.  
  
How Edge could hear him over the sound of traffic and the howling wind, Rus had no clue. But then, wouldn’t be the first time he had a way with the impossible.   
  
“I’m not going to force you to do anything. Rus.” Again, that strange inflection, as alien to him as the color in those vivid, crimson eyelights. Had Edge been anyone else—a human, an acquaintance from his world, even his own brother—Rus wasn’t so sure he’d have it in him to play along. But somehow, standing there, hearing his name from the mouth of a cross-verse stranger and wearing his jacket, Rus found his mind was made before the next words had a chance to leave Edge’s mouth. “I can speak with him for you, if you’d like.”  
  
“i’ll talk to him.” Rus nodded resolutely to himself, ignoring another nauseated lurch in his soul. He started off down the frozen sidewalk, stopping only to slant a glance at Edge, who made no move to follow. “you coming with to make sure i don’t take a detour off the pier?”  
  
“Only if you want me to.”  
  
Rus gave an involuntary smile, narrowly resisting an urge to roll his eyes. Be sending all kinds of wrong signals, and show nothing of the warmth of grudging gratitude that Rus felt nudging at his soul. “if you hope to ever get your jacket back, you better.”  
  
Hard to tell with the wind blowing snow into his face, but he thought he saw that weird, rare smile softening Edge’s features. “Do you have a travelcard?”  
  
Rus froze, the conflicted knot of emotion in his chest cramping in a fresh, fearful throb. A card he did have: Blue insisted on paying both their fares for a month ahead whenever their subsidies arrived, in spite of Rus rarely leaving the house and his increasingly desperate implorations not to bother. Rus could feel the damn thing in his pocket; thought he’d bring it along, if only to throw Blue off his tracks, but he hadn’t ridden with someone else since… since the last time, and this time it’d be Edge, and Edge was different, was better, had listened and kept his distance back at the bridge and would probably let go if Rus asked, he wasn’t gonna—  
  
He didn’t realize his grip had turned bruising until gloved fingers gently pried it off his wrist. They were gone again before Rus could do more than flinch, and if Edge thought anything of it, he didn’t let it show. The gentle glow of his eyelights stayed mellow as he asked, quietly, “How about we walk instead?”  
  
Swallowing felt like pumping solvent through a HPLC machine, but Rus managed. “yeah. sounds great.”  
  
It didn’t, really. But it beat standing around in the open in a burgeoning storm, so might as well be grateful for the silver lining.  
  
He couldn’t get a proper estimate of how long they took on their wee-hour promenade. For all his sleight with approximations, Rus had never really gone this far on foot: between shortcuts and commuter trains, or whatever combo he had spoons for on a given day, he’d never really felt the need. The commute took some twenty minutes on a good day, what with all the stops and the meandering of the railroad counted in, so a half-hour was probably somewhere in the ballpark. And yet, Rus found that he didn’t really mind: staying on the move helped stave off the worst of the cold, though he suspected some of it might be owed to Edge strategically walking between him and the rail, acting a living barrier between Rus and the sleeting winds. He didn’t talk, and the howling gales would hardly lend themselves to a coherent convo, anyway. Instead, it gave Rus a minute’s respite to still his racing thoughts.  
  
Empirical evidence be damned, taking inventory of the happenings of the night didn’t stir up that dreaded nausea again. Emotions felt like they were coming at him through a haze; any sharp, serrated edges dulled by marrow-deep exhaustion. Or perhaps not all of them were: resentment still sat heavy in his chest, towards Edge over pulling him off that bridge, and that alone was as fair a gauge as any that his head was screwed on wrongways. Not wrong enough for Rus to let his butthurt off the leash, perish the thought, but enough for the question of what to do about it to be… well, a question. He supposed thanks were in order; for better or for worse, what Edge did for him back there was probably fit to be filed under saving a life. And yet here Rus was without the ringing accolades, because even after all was said and done, he wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Much like his promises, Rus preferred his thanks to be the real deal. Besides, even lying felt like it’d be taking way too much of him right now. Rustling up a convincing act demanded a cool head and a poised exterior, both aspects in which Rus was sorely lacking.  
  
He hadn’t made much headway by the time the scenery around them changed from steel and concrete freeways to pothole-ridden streets flanked by scaffolding and small communal gardens. At this hour, the streets were quiet, empty even of the late night loiterers Rus would sometimes shoot the shit with on the fire escapes, most of the windows dark. The winds had yielded some once they were out of their direct path, and dwindled to nothingness by the time they stopped outside the apartment building Rus had been fully geared to never see again.  
  
“Here we are.” Edge eyed the security gate over the front door with something weirdly close to satisfaction. Rus had no guess at where he lived, but if Edge had any thoughts to spare about the bared bricks and peeling plaster, he kept them to himself.  
  
“yeah, i guess we are.” Rus didn’t loiter long: only stepped up, reaching for the door, and hesitated. His hand hovered aimlessly over the keypad for a few moments, stalling, then dropped back down at his side. He sighed deeply and turned back to Edge, fingers smearing nerves-sweat and melted snow as he swept a hand over his skull. “look, i know i’m asking for a lot already, but could you maybe hold my hand when he opens? this is so fucking stupid, but i’m just about jittering my way off the trolley and it’s—”  
  
“Yes.” Just one word, but it cut through his tirade cleaner than a sushi chef’s knife. The suddenness froze Rus mid-rant, and for a moment, he just stood there, gaping like a piece of soon-to-be-sashimi at Edge nodding to shore up his point, not a trace of doubt or judgment on his face. “Whatever helps you feel safer.”  
  
The fact that he did not say ‘safe’, but ‘safer’ helped more than Rus could reasonably defend.  
  
Grateful tears were prickling in his sockets, probably making him look twice the fool that he was, but for once, Rus didn’t care. “thanks”, he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper. No telling how well that went over, but that one he’d actually meant.  
  
From the split-second softness in Edge’s gaze, Rus thought perhaps that he could tell. He offered a curt nod, and Rus nodded back and turned back to the keypad, cold-numbed fingers nailing the buzz code on the third attempt. Inside, the air was fusty with dampness and the ingrained aroma of someone’s sempiternal soup, the same faintly-sour bouquet that had suffused the place for about as long as Rus could remember. The stairwell was only marginally warmer than the out, but after hours spent on his ass and feet out in the snow, it felt like the height of accommodation. More, it felt like home, and Rus waited patiently while Edge stomped the snow off his sneakers, then jerked his head toward the stairs, choosing to forego the jangly elevator in the interest of sparing Edge the rousing diatribes of sleep-cranky neighbors.  
  
A minute, two at most and there they were, standing together at his and Blue’s apartment door, snowmelt dripping off them both to seep into the twills of Blue’s hand-woven welcome mat; Rus in sodden sneakers and with a stranger’s hand in his. Edge’s hand was warm even through the thick material of his gloves: strong, heady warmth chasing the leftover chill from Rus’s fingers, and even with the millstone of his guilt over Blue’s impending grief dragging him down, Rus could almost bring himself to smile.  
  
Fuck it, two tears in a bucket. He could stand to stick around for one more day.

**Author's Note:**

> i want to extend a spectral hug to anyone who feels or ever has felt the way Rus does here. if you feel things are shit-out-of-town bad, for the love of everything, [ don't keep it to yourself.](http://www.suicide.org/index.html) it sounds cliche, but sometimes things get fuckawful before they can get better. 
> 
> what a dreadful year it's been. please stay safe out there, my starlings.


End file.
